This article focuses on two women educator activists based in Birmingham, UK, in the first decades of the twentieth century: Geraldine Southall Cadbury (1865-1941) and Margaret Ann Backhouse (1887-1977). Motivated by a common belief in education as a force for progressive social change Cadbury and Backhouse were both Quakers who shared similar social backgrounds and were active in a range of educational and humanitarian causes. This article presents two episodes from their broader lives of activism to explore how transnational exchanges in which they were involved were inscribed onto a local educational landscape, and the role that their faith, and their profound belief in the power of the personal, played in their agency. The article will conclude with brief reflections on how we might interpret and locate both women's identities.